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Speaking of L'Osservatore Romano...

Some will never forgive the Pope Emeritus's resolve in trying to fix a particular problem coming from previous pontificates, enhanced during the entire Montini and Wojtyla pontificates. Every single day Benedict XVI fought against it, and was insulted by the media even as he tried to fix it - even on the eve of his last days, there he was fixing another inherited problem and personally sorting out the O'Brien debacle. As editorialist Lucetta Scaraffia said in the past Sunday's edition of L'Osservatore Romano:

The pontificate of Joseph Ratzinger ... was revolutionary in fact, also because it was opposed to the widespread practice of covering up scandals to prevent the image of the Church from being tarnished. The tenacious determination of Benedict XVI in arresting this by now unsustainable trend made a clear sign, indicating a path for which there is no return. And the Pope himself recalled several times that hiding the truth and avoiding the recognition of the culpable damage the Church much more than the public "scandal". (L'Osservatore Romano, Mar. 3, 2013, p. 1, Editorial "La via della fede")

We hope the Lord Cardinals consider the need for immaculateness in all such matters, in the path established by then-Cardinal Ratzinger in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and especially in his years as Pope. Which again shows that the problem of the Church does not seem to be too much Roman centralization, but too little Roman oversight. As soon as the abuse and harassment problems were faced head on by Rome, they began to be resolved - when they remained limited to local dioceses and Conferences of Bishops, they were mostly ignored, hidden, or even made worse.

Pope Benedict XVI was a conservative liberal.While he refuse to correct the errors of Vatican II especially on religious liberty and the new Mass, yet conservative when it comes to morality. I hope his successor will now have both. Holy, Traditional and in addition, a strong and bold Pope.

I was heartened to read about BXVI's record of dismissing Bishops quite regularly. +Morris in Toowoomba being the example, par excellence. The new Pope will need to re-double (well re-quintuple) this effort. Especially those who pertanaciously persist in the behaviour rightly cited by John L. Financial mismanagers cause less harm than spiritual mismanagers.

Certainly during his pontificate the liturgy began to escape from perpetual conciliar and papal guarantees into liberal modernist clutches. In sharp contrast, it was he as cardinal who feared the suicide of change in both sides of the lex supplicandi/lex credendi equation. He was a great pope but he was being undermined by some of his contemporaries: Cardinal Montini, for example.